Souldancer (Soul Cycle Book 2) (45 page)

Cook’s thick lips parted in a grin. “You’ve grown a lot.”

A dreadful hope returned to Astlin. “Do you think Sulaiman’s right?”

“About killing Thera? Tefler thinks so. He just went to check Sulaiman’s progress.”

Astlin shook her head. “About me saving everyone.”

Cook folded her in a hug. “I think you would if you could.”

Astlin’s arms barely encircled his torso. “All of this pain has to stop.”

“You’re right,” said Cook, “but how?”

“If there’s a way,” Astlin said, “I have to find it.”

Sulaiman scrubbed a callused hand through his beard and looked to Smith. “Is the piece complete?”

The souldancer had grown to fill a dark corner of the
Kerioth’s
cluttered workroom—a bloated spider hanging on a web of its own clockwork flesh. The absence of the corpse pile that had occupied the same corner nagged Sulaiman like a dangling thread, but he resisted pulling it.

Presently Smith descended and scuttled toward him. “Judge for yourself.”

A length of mirrored metal emerged from the mass of gears. The object’s white surface gave a lavender tint to the reflection of Sulaiman’s hand as he grasped it. Drawing out the rest of the hilt and the curved blade, its lightness amazed him.

Perhaps the least reason why ether metal is so highly prized,
he thought. Sulaiman himself had contributed his key. Thurif had left a knife-sized portion. Gid had supplied the rest at the cost of Sulaiman’s every temporal possession, less the clothes on his back.

Never have I struck so fine a bargain.

Sulaiman reverently tucked the white scimitar—an image in metal of his lost fiery blade—into his belt and looked to Smith. “I would know your mind.”

Smith’s beaked mouth split in a morbid grin. “Sharing my mind would take much longer than a voyage to Keth. Specify your request.”

“Why do you aid me when your liberty is forfeit should I succeed?”

“Were that true,” Smith said with a grating laugh, “you’d already be dead.”

“Will I succeed?”

“Go and see.”

“How will I find what I seek?”

“Enter the terminus where all places; all times converge,” said Smith. “Picture your destination strongly enough, and Kairos will lead you there.”

“I am decided,” Sulaiman said. “Admit me to Kairos.”

Mirai Smith’s fluid form grew until his head rose above Sulaiman’s. The mass of gears flattened into a rectangle, leaving an empty frame with the souldancer’s face leering down from the top.

“Enter,” he said.

The view of Smith’s grim chamber through the frame vanished, replaced by a strange vista. Colossal blocks of multicolored gears turned in an impossibly complex dance. The larger blocks rippled with the movement of smaller faster gears, which were in turn composed of gears still smaller and faster. Sulaiman fancied that he glimpsed something behind the churning cogs, as if the sight before him were symbolic of deeper truths.

“If I succeed,” he told Smith, “uncounted innocents will owe you their lives.”

He’d taken one step toward the gate when a tinny voice behind him said, “All known models rule out temporal displacement. Proceeding entails violation of basic physical laws.”

The chill of the blade at his back radiated through Sulaiman’s cloak.

“For once, I’d listen to him,” rasped Th’ix.

“You disappoint me,” Sulaiman said. “A skilled traitor doesn’t delay so long.”

“Traitor?” Th’ix laughed. “I’m saving your life.”

“Or so our queen told you?” Sulaiman turned to face his betrayer, who held the Regulator’s head in one arm and pointed a grey scimitar with the other.

“She said you’d try meddling with time. Now I’m stepping in before you kill yourself.”

The shades eating his soul briefly recoiled from Sulaiman’s flashing anger. “Nakvin never released me. I’ve only done her bidding since I returned to this sphere.”

Th’ix grinned. “She had her suspicions—and sent me to learn how you’d confirm them.”

“What else does she command? That the smith and I go down to Avalon as her prisoners?”

“Not if you go willingly,” said Th’ix.

“Proximity alert,” the Regulator droned. “Subject charged with breaching a Guild facility approaching.”

Tefler walked in and stood with the workbench between himself and Th’ix. He crossed his arms and frowned at Sulaiman. “Were you leaving without me?”

“There are risks you cannot know.” Sulaiman glanced at the sword in Th’ix’s hand. “But the question is moot.”

Th’ix leveled the shadow blade at Sulaiman’s heart. “This way is better. Your scheme could only end in tears.”

“Wait,” said Tefler. “You mean
no one’s
killing Thera?”

“Warning,” the Regulator said. “Ambient Void reaching hazardous concentrations.”

Sallow light flashed behind Th’ix and faded. Sulaiman discerned no effects, save for a slight chill.

Th’ix cast a contemptuous look over his shoulder. “I dwell a hair’s breadth from the Void. What harm can it do me?”

“Less than my cat,” Tefler said.

Shock replaced puzzlement on Th’ix’s face as a small mummified form leapt from the table and latched onto his arm. The sword and the head clattered to the deck as Th’ix flailed at the dead cat.

Sulaiman recited a short formula of exorcism. The act diverted his prana’s flow, and icy claws rent at his life cord.

“You are dismissed,” he said through chattering teeth as he finished the rite.

Th’ix vanished, leaving only the head and the grey scimitar behind.

“Where did he go?” asked Tefler.

Sulaiman gorged his soul on prana, but the shades hardly retreated.

Tefler could burn them out,
he thought. But the amount of prana required to cleanse him might also kill him. He fought back his shivering and said, “Avalon.”

Tefler threw up his hands. “I had to bribe a shipwright’s kid to bring my cat aboard, and you banish it to the Sixth Circle of hell?”

Staying on his feet took an effort, but Sulaiman marshaled his strength. “Thank you for your sacrifice.”

“You owe me,” Tefler said.

I could have left you to suffer this wound,
thought Sulaiman. Indeed, letting the greycloak slay Tefler would have kept his own hands clean.
No. Only less bloody.

“I’ll honor my debt by avenging you upon the goddess who slew the world.”

Tefler started toward the gate. “Help me help myself.”

Sulaiman drew the white sword and held Tefler at its gleaming point. “Your consecration to Thera would imperil us both! Your part in her downfall is ended. Whether I fail or triumph, we will not meet again.”

Not wishing to argue further with the man he would doom, Sulaiman turned and lurched through the gate.

Sulaiman Iason trudges through the winter in his soul one faltering step at a time, and time marches beside him. The towers of spinning gears and the dark canyons between are mere signs of phenomena too complex for senses which, though they’ve known hell, must bow to mortal limits.

Paths more intricate than any maze meet and branch under skies as black as the unknown. Sulaiman knows that a single misstep could send him wandering for all eternity, but he forges ahead, guided by unshakable faith in his chosen course.

Another chasm yawns before him; its far side invisible. Sulaiman doesn’t hesitate to set foot on the slender bridge spanning the gulf. The clatter of the gears subsides as he limps across, rubbing his chest in a hopeless effort to banish the chill within.

He remembers. Or rather, he brushes against a fateful past moment.

The thread of light cutting a narrow trail through the prevailing dimness; the rustling of silk against stone disturbing the silence; the scent of lavender overshadowing the odor of dust and rotting books—all of these announced Nakvin’s intrusion to Sulaiman as clearly as any herald.

He stayed hunched over the tomes and scrolls on the ancient desk in the archives of Seele, even when she stood directly behind him.

“I know what you’re doing, Sulaiman.”

Sulaiman didn’t pause from making a note in the margin of a commentary on the Burned Book. “One should hope so, my liege.”

The silk of Nakvin’s robe whispered as she made a few discreet motions. Every candle in the room blazed with a flame many times larger, brighter, and hotter than before.

Sulaiman squinted.
Queenship suits her well. She proceeds from strength to strength.

“Damn it, Sulaiman,” said Nakvin. “Take a minute out from plotting to kill my daughter, stand up like a man, and face me.”

With an inner grin, Sulaiman did as he was ordered. Nakvin stood before him; arms draped in lily white sleeves folded across her chest. Tresses black as ravens’ wings framed a pale face whose silver eyes seemed to pierce his soul.

“You didn’t think you’d keep this from me,” she said.

“I did not.”

Rage seethed behind Nakvin’s stern visage. “Then why in the name of all the departed gods did you scheme to kill Elena
under my own roof!?
”

Sulaiman felt the queen’s wrath wash over him. Keeping calm taxed his will. “You know the necessity of my work. One death will spare untold innocent lives.”

Nakvin’s face fell, but she soon rallied. “Elena didn’t ask for what happened to her. Others put her into that position. She’s no guiltier than the billions who died in the Cataclysm; and less guilty than some I could name.”

The degree to which Nakvin’s claim shook him surprised Sulaiman. He was not unfamiliar with moral philosophy, having debated such matters in the Skola while he was yet a prefect on Mithgar.

Is it just to kill even a single innocent if a hundred be saved?
Sulaiman had thought the hypothetical solved to his satisfaction. After all, there were far more than a hundred souls at stake, and the girl was far from blameless, whatever her mother said.

But deserving of death?

Sulaiman’s inner conflict must have shown on his face, because Nakvin said, “You’re a prefect of Midras, sworn to defend the innocent. Despenser may have made you a monster on the outside, but you’re still the same soul who gave me his cloak when I’d lost mine.”

A terrible weight pressed down on Sulaiman’s heart. He struggled against it for a moment before finally letting it crush every rationalization.

“As you say, my part is protecting the weak from the wicked. My god’s abdication changes nothing. And perhaps one who kills an innocent to save millions himself deserves death. Yet the task must be done.”

Sulaiman marched toward the stairs, brushing past a stunned-looking Nakvin.

“I’ve been damned before,” he said. “Let the pain of this deed rest upon me.” He took the first step.

Sulaiman takes another step on the timeless bridge. Once more he ponders the ancient dilemma. Astlin and Tefler have made his task more difficult, but no less needful. He struggles on.

From the apex of the white arc he spies the other side. A broad stairway rises from the bridgehead to a platform on the threshold of something so ineffable that he sees only darkness.

A slim, cloaked figure stands at the foot of the stairs and raises a pale face capped with hair like black wool.

“What offering do you bring me?” the stranger’s voice has the smoothness and clarity of youth, but the weariness of untold age. He is a Gen—or something more.

The frozen ache in his soul, more than his confusion, makes Sulaiman grimace. “Why expect an offering of me?”

“Is that not the office of a priest?”

Sulaiman’s grip on his sword tightens. “You claim divinity?”

The stranger’s agate eyes—ringed with circles like dark bruises—peer at the white scimitar. “Your blade is cunningly wrought. But I’ve seen better.”

“I neither seek nor have time for your appraisal; nor have I gifts to give. Make way, or draw arms if you would bar my path.”

The stranger’s lips curve slightly, but his eyes are sad. “I stood once where you stand now, and another priest of Midras held my place. His death lasts till the gears of Kairos stop.”

Sulaiman levels his blade at the stranger’s throat. “For laying hands on one sacred to Midras, and for hindering his justice, I condemn you to die.”

With a movement as mysterious as the motions of Kairos, the stranger draws a sword and parries the thrust aimed at his neck. The stranger’s speed isn’t what leaves Sulaiman gaping, but the fact that he holds a white scimitar identical to Sulaiman’s own.

Perhaps not identical.
The jolt of power through their crossed blades leads Sulaiman to believe that the stranger’s boast was understated. Proof comes when the stranger slices the air above and behind Sulaiman’s head, and one set of cold shadowy claws falls limply away from his life cord.

“Death is too good for me,” the stranger says, “but I’ve delayed yours long enough to see your task through.”

He extends both hands to Sulaiman. One still holds his mirrored sword; hilt first. “In return, I require your nascent Elohim. You mustn’t go unarmed, so you may borrow mine.”

Like a puppet on strings, Sulaiman offers his sword as he takes the stranger’s. The white metal feels uncomfortably hot in his hand, but the shades that still seek his life recoil from it.